The silence after the shift ends

I stood in the empty shop floor for a minute after the last worker left. The lights hummed like they were tired too. I could hear my own breath, and the faint creak of the floorboards—same ones that groaned when we moved the old press in ’09. There’s something about that quiet, just before the building forgets it was ever alive. I don’t know why I noticed it today. Maybe because I didn’t want to go home yet.